The Night is Deafening, but the Silence is Listening
by speckov
Summary: James T Kirk and his first officer, Commander Spock, find themselves tumbling out of a window in San Francisco. In their last few moments after detonating a preserving time sphere, they have spare time to say everything they couldn't before... k/s pairing, fluffy ficlet.


**((A/N: I wasn't gonna post until someone had read it but in order for anyone to read it I have to post it**

**so here y'all go**

**oh yeah and the title is from a Lights song called 'Saviour'**

**and i wrote it after like 21 hours of not sleeping so idk how good it is i just wanted some feedback u feel me**

**tags: kirk/spock, fluffy, ficlet (its like 3k or something idk I wrote it on a plane)**

**Send me feedback, yo))**

**The Night is Deafening, but the Silence is Listening**

by Geri Spillers (aka tumblr user speckov)

Illuminated shards of glass filled the evening air near the one-hundred-sixty-first floor as two humanoid figures burst through the windowpanes. Skyrocketing down through the crisp San Francisco air, Captain James Tiberius Kirk fumbled frantically for his parachute, pulling fruitlessly on the strings. Beside him, his first officer made no attempt to search his own person for the missing parachute.

"Spock! I can't seem- to find my parachute!" Kirk yelled over the howling wind. He tried to keep the panic from his voice, but one look at the Vulcan's calm expression proved that Spock knew he was panicking, and was not doing the same.

"Captain, your parachute is still with the ship. You cut the strings because you said it would be too much weight, remember?" Spock's calm, logical voice only seemed to aggravate Kirk even more.

"Now that you mention it," Kirk shouted, "No, I fucking don't!"

Spock continued to appraise his falling companion with an unblinking stare.

"Dammit, Spock! Don't just stare at me, do something!" Kirk began frenetically pulling at his pockets, trying to find something – anything – that would slow their fall. Spock, however, seemed unfazed by their steady descent.

"Captain, I do not understand what you wish for me to do. The odds of our surviving this fall are less than point-one-six percent."

"Spock! Stop pulling numbers outta your ass and start checking your pockets! You might find something! It really can't hurt to try at this point!" Kirk was still fighting to be heard over the shrieking wind as they fell. He pulled out his comm with a shaking hand, only to watch it fly past him as he lost his hold on the small device. He swore and looked over at the science officer, who had begun to calmly check his pockets.

"Captain, I believe I have found a device-"

"Great, do it!" At this point, Kirk didn't care. The ground was beginning to creep towards them at an uncomfortably fast pace. After all the space explorations, all the near-death experiences, _this_ was how he was going to go out? Falling off of a building on his home planet?

"Captain, I am warning you, this device could kill us both if I-"

"Spock, it doesn't matter, _just do it!"_

Spock held out a small, egg-like device and cautiously pressed a button on the front. Immediately the wind died down and the glass shards falling beside them slowed to a halt. Kirk looked over at Spock with an incredulous stare.

"I activated a time capsule, Captain. No time will pass until I reactivate it… Or the device is broken." Spock held it out to his superior. "Here, take it."

He tossed the capsule gently towards Kirk. The involuntary gasp that escaped him was met with a slight smile from Spock. As the egg floated weightlessly towards him, Spock continued.

"As time has no effect here, neither does the concept of gravity. We are perfectly safe. Observe." Spock began to swim through the air towards Jim, kicking his legs and flapping his arms. It was almost laughable, and Kirk would've laughed had he not been about to die. If anything, the capsule had forestalled the inevitable, and he really did not want to think about what would happen if the device detonated.

"That's great, Spock. How long do we have?"

"As long as we need. Unless, of course, the device imp-"

"Yeah, I get it. Unless it blows up and drops us back into reality." Kirk reached out a steadying hand as Spock floated towards him. The Vulcan took it, albeit somewhat bashfully, as his drift came to a halt.

"Precisely, Captain." Spock held on to Kirk, his momentum ceased for the moment.

"Mister Spock, do you happen to have your comm with you?" Jim looked Spock intently in the eyes, a slight grin beginning to form on his lips as he relaxed.

"Affirmative."

"Would you mind calling the Enterprise and asking Mister Scott to beam us up?"

"It would be my pleasure, Captain." As Spock went to fiddling with his handheld communicator, Kirk glanced downwards. There wasn't nearly enough airspace beneath where they hovered.

"Spock, how many floors are below us?"

"By my estimate, I would say about twenty-five, Jim." Kirk looked up at the sound of his first name. Usually the Vulcan preferred 'Captain' or 'sir' when referring to his superior. He was only 'Jim' when they were off the job – which was a rarity unto itself.

"That's… Not very reassuring."

"I am aware, Captain." Spock held up his comm and looked at it intently. "Hmm."

"What is it?"

"It would appear that time would have to be functioning correctly in order for my communicator to work."

"So what you're saying is, we're screwed." Jim sighed and looked down. "Great. Hey, where'd you even get that thing in the first place?" He gestured to the capsule.

"It is a state-of-the-art design. A few of the scientists on New Vulcan have been developing such a product, and I received one in the mail a few weeks ago. The box was unmarked and I did not question it. It was accompanied only by a note saying that it was only to be used in the direst of emergencies. In fact, I was not entirely certain that I should have used it just now.

"One would think… It is almost pathetic for us to die in such a manner, after everything we've been through together." Spock looked away, unsure of what to say next. His grip relaxed slightly on his Captain's calloused hand.

Jim was quiet for a long moment. Then he spoke, looking at Spock with a half-hearted grin. "Believe me, Spock, I know. I honestly thought I'd go down fighting, or in a cool explosion or something. Not falling out a window, and especially not on Earth. You'd think I'd at least get Luna or something. But no, here we are."

"Captain, may I speak freely?"

"Of course."

"May I just say…? It has been an honor serving under you, and I cannot think of a more admirable way than to go down at your side. Even if we were defenestrated unceremoniously." Spock finally met the Jim's gaze, and he felt a part of him – the human part, most likely – start to soften. He allowed himself to feel a tinge of admiration for the rugged, stubborn, all-too-human man beside him.

"Spock, I… I don't know what to say." A slight tinge crept across Jim's nose as he stammered. "I just… Of course, it was an honor to work with you too. You know, you're my closest friend, Spock."

The science officer was taken aback, though he hardly showed it. "I am? But what about Doctor McCoy? I am aware of the nature of your bond to him."

"Bond? I mean, yeah, we're friends. But the guy's grumpy all the time." Kirk's brow furrowed in confusion. _Bond?_ He thought to himself. _What bond?_ "Spock, you know my closest bond is to you. You're the only one I can really trust. Your decisions have saved me over and over again, even if you were a pain in the ass sometimes." _Might as well just say it all now. It's my last chance before I die, _Kirk thought with a mental shrug.

"Captain, I never knew. I was under the impression that you loathed me most of the time." The lithe fingers encircling the slightly larger ones shifted under the confession.

"What? Of course not! I mean, yeah, I wasn't the nicest, and sure, I did some shitty stuff, but that doesn't mean I loathed you. It's actually quite the opposite. You're my best friend, Spock."

"T'hy'la."

"What?" Kirk stared at his first officer, the odd word spinning around in his mind.

"T'hy'la, that is the word you are looking for." Spock said calmly. "It is a word my people use most infrequently. It can be translated most closely to brother, or friend… In some cases, even lover."

Kirk stared at Spock.

"I'm sorry, Captain, if I have overstepped any boundaries, I sincerely apologi-"

"No, Spock, it's not that. I just didn't know there was a word for what I wanted to say. T'hy'la?"

Spock nodded upon hearing the correct pronunciation of the Vulcan word. "Yes, Captain. T'hy'la."

Kirk floated a bit closer, closed his grip a bit tighter on the Vulcan's hand, and spoke a bit softer. "Then you are my t'hy'la."

Hovering twenty-five stories above the metropolitan sidewalk, inside a sphere where time had no meaning, two men confessed everything to each-other.

"I'm so sorry, Spock. I never meant to hurt you. You have to understand, it was for the whole of humanity-"

"Jim, that does not change that fact that it was my mother you were talking about. My own mother, who I watched fall through a crack in the rocks of my disintegrating planet, the human who raised me and kept me even though I was a half-blood." Spock's face appeared calm, though the tears were rolling freely down his cheeks. "Do you know what that was like? No-one accepted me. I was an abomination, an atrocity to be kept hidden. And do you know what she did? She kept me! A disgrace herself, the only human on an alien planet, and _she kept me._ I was her pride and joy, and how did I repay her? By watching her fall to her death! _It's my fault she's dead, Jim!" _Spock was shouting now, blinking back the tears that threatened to overwhelm him.

"And do you know the worst part of it? I could not hate you for saying such things. I tried, but I simply could not. I felt too strongly for you, Jim. I was emotionally overwhelmed.

"And then, when you died… There was something about watching you meet my gaze for the last time in the warp core that just made me snap. I could never hate you, Jim. Never. I believe Lieutenant Uhura realized this when she ordered me to cease my attack on Khan immediately after your death."

"Spock, I had no idea." Kirk staggered under the weight of the new information. "I'm so sorry I said those things. There's no excuse for how I treated you. "He cautiously reached out an arm to hug the Vulcan's shoulders. "I don't think I could ever hate you either."

Spock gazed up at his human friend, brown eyes wide with compassion. "Captain…"

As James Kirk leaned forward, a tinny beeping from near his head interrupted him. He swiped the capsule out of the air and peered at it. "Oh, shit."

"What is it?" Spock's words were cut off as Kirk lobbed the small round device as high as he could.

"Get ready to call Scotty immediately!" Kirk shouted as the device detonated.

The Vulcan Science officer and the human Captain began hurtling towards Earth as Spock shouted into the suddenly active comm, "Beam us up! Now!"

"Roger!" A metallic, Scottish voice confirmed over the communications device. Kirk watched as their hands began to stir with the familiar light and the familiar tugging in his stomach began. But as the sidewalk rushed up to meet them too soon, he closed his eyes, turned to Spock, his best friend, his t'hy'la, and took a chance.

"Ah've got 'em!" Montgomery Scott shouted to the tense and waiting crowd of Starfleet engineers, officers, and lieutenants of the Enterprise. "Hold on fer a wee minute, and they'll be flyin' in here…"

A faint golden outline of two tangled bodies began to faintly glow on the transporter floor. The crew waited with bated breath, wondering if they had been too late. Acting Captain Hikaru Sulu muttered something in Japanese, to which Lieutenant Nyota Uhura murmured a reply to in the same tongue. Doctor Leonard McCoy watched anxiously from sickbay, and Ensign Pavel Chekov squinted through his thick welding mask at the screen from Engineering.

The bodies became more opaque as the recognizable hum of the transporter grew steadily. As the lights began to fade, signaling the successful completion of the transportation, the gathered crew collectively leaned in anxiously for a better look.

Lips locked in a frantic, desperate, no-holds-barred kiss, Captain James T. Kirk and First Officer Spock lay in a heap on the transporter deck. There was a slight, collective gasp. Sulu was the first to break the silence.

"Oh, my."

Thank you to the following:

hannibalshunters, for being my head nerd despite not being a Trekkie

warpfactors, for reading it and not hating it

and vulcanist, my lovely partner-in-trek

i hope u liked because it was fun to write

i might clean it up a bit later but right now its just fluff (◡‿◡✿)


End file.
